


How Flash Thompson figured out Spider-Man's identity and totally kept his cool (Spoiler: He didn't.)

by suicidalsloth



Series: exploring family dynamics [2]
Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Identity Porn, M/M, Social Media, Twitter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29434896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suicidalsloth/pseuds/suicidalsloth
Summary: Spider-Man starts shitposting on Twitter. Peter Parker moves in the Stark Tower.They are indeed two completely unrelated events, but. It all starts adding up...
Relationships: Peter Parker/Flash Thompson
Series: exploring family dynamics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2162115
Comments: 5
Kudos: 90





	How Flash Thompson figured out Spider-Man's identity and totally kept his cool (Spoiler: He didn't.)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KapteeniAngie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KapteeniAngie/gifts).



> I don't. Even have a Twitter myself. Sorry.  
> Hyvää ystävänpäivää ♥

**spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 6h  
i’m bi  
🗨️ 594 🔁 2.4K ❤️ 5.2K

 **rating nyc food trucks 🥞🌮** @mercwithamouth • 6h  
is this real????  
🗨️ 67 🔁 59 ❤️ 293

 **spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 6h  
i mean why would i lie about my sexuality  
🗨️ 93 🔁 405 ❤️ 989

 **rating nyc food trucks 🥞🌮** @mercwithamouth • 6h  
i’m not celebrating yet,,, is this account real?  
🗨️ 13 🔁 91 ❤️ 358

 **spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 6h  
@tonystark am i real  
🗨️ 194 🔁 1.4K ❤️ 2.6K

 **Tony Stark** ☑️ @tonystark • 6h  
Unfortunately  
🗨️ 8.7K 🔁 10.9K ❤️ 19.1K

Spider-Man takes Twitter by storm. Every media outlet rips through every word, every syllable he writes. Hundreds of Spider-Man fan accounts appear overnight. It makes Flash scoff. He was there first. He’s been following Spider-Man since he started — he’s met him! 

He makes sure he’ll have notifications for every time Spider-Man tweets anything. He starts making compilations of Spider-Man’s shitposting for his Instagram. Somehow he feels like he’s closer to Spider-Man now — he’s not some larger than life entity no one can really pin down. He’s an actual human being. He seems young, so different from all the jaded old superheroes. 

Flash does not think that Spider-Man coming out as bisexual means that he has a chance. He doesn’t.

* * *

“So… Spider-Man is bi,” Cindy says with a grin when Flash walks in. She’s clearly talking to him.

“So he is,” Flash says flippantly and drops his backpack on the table. Their AcaDec practice is starting in three minutes, but Harrington isn’t there yet which leaves them ample time to ridicule him of his Spider-Man obsession. 

“Doesn’t mean you have a chance with him,” Abe says, leaning back in his chair. Flash kind of hopes he falls on his back. 

At the other end of the table, Parker chokes on his water.

Flash sits down, takes out his phone and mumbles, “You don’t know that.” He knows he’s blushing, he can feel the heat radiating off his face. He opens Twitter for the 9000th time this day and wonders what’s the mathematical possibility of Spider-Man even answering if he slid into his DMs.

* * *

**spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 22h  
if you believe in the multiverse theory, there has to be a reality where i'm just a hivemind of thousands of spiders in this suit  
🗨️ 202 🔁 829 ❤️ 7.3K

> **spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 22h  
>  and can you really know for sure it's not THIS reality  
>  🗨️ 84 🔁 211 ❤️ 2.5K

> **Tony Stark** ☑️ @tonystark • 22h  
>  Go the fuck to sleep kid  
>  🗨️ 29.3K 🔁 49.5K ❤️ 67.9K

* * *

Flash doesn’t mean to eavesdrop. And he really does try not to stare. More often than not he just happens to sit close to Peter, Ned and Michelle during lunch and well. There’s not much to focus on besides the mediocre cafeteria food.

“So we still on tonight?” Michelle asks, sounding indifferent as always.

Peter seems confused for a second. “Oh no, I forgot! I still have to pack, sorry.”

Michelle rolls her eyes. Ned blinks slowly. “Peter. You’re moving in two days.”

“I know I know, it’s just. Ugh. I hate moving! The concept sounded really good and I was so excited when May agreed but… _I hate moving_. I didn’t know, I’ve never moved before. It sucks.”

“It’s fine, we can raincheck,” MJ tells him and goes back to her notebook. Flash is pretty sure Peter’s anguish makes him the perfect model for her as she starts sketching. For a while there’s a lull in the conversation, they go back to their lunches.

Suddenly Peter stops, his fork halfway in the air. He stares somewhere in the distance. “Oh shit. I just realised.”

“Hm?”

“What am I going to do with all the merch? I can’t have Iron Man posters on my walls if I’m _living with Iron Man_.” He drops his fork to press his face into his hands.

Peter seems genuinely distressed. Flash doesn’t know what to think.

Ned consoles him, patting his back and telling him that he’s happy to adopt anything Peter wants to get rid of. Michelle laughs at them.

* * *

**spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 1h  
so apparently it’s perfectly reasonable to attack stark tower at 7:02 AM on a thursday  
🗨️ 690 🔁 419 ❤️ 1.6K

> **jameson 🚀** @jjjthethird • 1h  
>  okay so why are you tweeting?  
>  🗨️ 29 🔁 16 ❤️ 78

> **spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 1h  
>  i’m stuck in the penthouse and apparently fri is ""down""  
>  🗨️ 111 🔁 97 ❤️ 188

> **Tony Stark** ☑️ @tonystark • 1h  
>  And you will stay there  
>  🗨️ 924 🔁 1.3K ❤️ 11.9K

> **spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 17m  
>  FINALLY come on baddies i have school 🙄🙄🙄  
>  🗨️ 4.1K 🔁 992 ❤️ 1.8K

> **Tony Stark** ☑️ @tonystark • 15m  
>  I had a board meeting, so inconsiderate  
>  🗨️ 988 🔁 2.1K ❤️ 9.3K 

> **spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 15m  
>  fkkfdsk like you don’t love any excuse to get out of meetings  
>  🗨️ 74 🔁 294 ❤️ 732

> **jennifer** @jenphd • 13m  
>  IDK bout that but i at least love how spidey’s always calling iron man out  
>  🗨️ 39 🔁 854 ❤️ 1.2K

* * *

It's the second period, precisely 8 minutes after the start of class when Peter runs in. The teacher levels him with a stare that demands an explanation and some of the students snicker.

“Sorry,” Peter says breathlessly as he navigates to his seat. “The tower went under lockdown.”

That’s the exact moment when it starts to dawn on Flash. He resolutely stops himself from even thinking about it for the next five hours before he gets home. Honestly, he should get some kind of an award for it. He mechanically makes himself a sandwich and wanders to his room, takes out his homework and then.

He says it out loud.

“Peter is Spider-Man.”

His cats look at him weird — kind of like they’re judging he didn’t figure it out earlier. It’s so. Obvious, now that he knows it. 

“Oh my god. What the fuck.” 

Flash gets up from his bed, almost throwing his books down in his haste. He paces around his room, shaking his head, reconsidering all of his life choices. It feels like his whole life to this point is flashing before his eyes. Is this what death feels like?

“What the fuck. What the fuck. Oh my god.”

He runs his hands through his hair, fishes his phone out of his pocket and opens Twitter to scroll through Spider-Man’s feed. It’s exactly what Peter says around his friends — he once asked Ned if soap has calories. And then he finds a poll asking whether honey mustard or ranch is better with McNuggets from last week and Flash remembers clearly how Peter and Michelle fought about it in a way that was close to escalating into throwing hands before Ned told them to ask Twitter. (Flash at least voted right, small mercies.) 

So. That cements it.

“Holy shit. Spider-Man is Peter Parker. I’ve known Spider-Man for years. I’ve _bullied_ Spider-Man. Oh fuck.”

He looks up to his cats who are witnessing his freakout, curled around each other. Minerva stops grooming Mimi in the face of his dread. “Oh fuck,” he says to them.

* * *

**spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 6m  
yesterday i overheard tony asking pepper if they can buy twitter to stop people thirst tweeting about me so this is me asking you to tone it down so iron man doesn’t spend billions of dollars just to censor your horny asses  
🗨️ 992 🔁 1.3K ❤️ 2.4K

> **felicia** @antiheroine • 5m  
>  i mean can you blame us you’re so 🤤🤤🤤 we need your diet and workout regimen  
>  🗨️ 88 🔁 16 ❤️ 132

> **spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 5m  
>  is that a joke lmao yesterday i ate 7 pepperoni pizzas for science because we’re experimenting with my mutations with tony and my workouts are web slinging and kicking ass  
>  🗨️ 677 🔁 915 ❤️1.1K

> **mooncake** @cindymoonmoon • 4m  
>  that’s like 16 thousand calories what the frick how are you so fit  
>  🗨️ 17 🔁 9 ❤️ 91

> **spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 4m  
>  metabolism? aforementioned mutations lol  
>  🗨️ 522 🔁 289 ❤️ 879

* * *

He doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge. It’s not like he can share it with anyone — the last thing he wants to do is endanger ~~Peter’s~~ Spider-Man’s life. At the same time he’s afraid he’s acting weird and Peter will know. If it ever comes to it, he needs to act like he had it all together. Like it changed nothing, like he took it in stride.

At least he stopped being a complete asshole well before he figured it out and they’ve just been mostly ignoring each other for a while. Flash stops looking at Peter and his friends during lunch, and then he wonders if they notice and think it’s because he knows. For a second he wonders if Ned and Michelle even know but they have to know. Everything points to them knowing. Spider-Man actually sometimes randomly likes Michelle’s art and actually answers to Ned’s replies to his tweets — Flash used to be jealous as hell but this explains it.

Who is he kidding? He’s still jealous. He knows they’ll never be friends with Peter, not with their past. Not after everything he’s said and done, but… At least he can try to be better. Nicer. Join the conversations in academic decathlon, maybe. When he gets over the fact that Peter is Spider-Man and can actually think of interacting with him in any capacity without having a meltdown. He doesn’t know if that’s possible.

He kind of hates Peter for being Spider-Man. He kind of hates Spider-Man. If it was anyone else, maybe — just maybe, he could have a chance. He kind of hates how he can’t stop thinking about Peter taking off the mask, his messy curls even more tangled and tousled. 

And now he’s being weird and staring. Great.

* * *

* * *

* * *

**spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 3h  
some male spiders just want to be eaten 😔😔😔  
🗨️ 666 🔁 4.2K ❤️ 6.9K

> **spidey notice me 🕸️🕷️** @arachnophiliac • 3h  
>  it’s 4 am. do you even sleep??+  
>  🗨️ 34 🔁 13 ❤️ 832

> **spidey-man** @thwipthwip • 3h  
>  insomnia is one of my many superpowers  
>  🗨️ 420 🔁 1.2K ❤️ 3.5K

* * *

It’s been a couple of months since the mistletoe. Honestly getting together has changed very little of their dynamic, after all they were already kind of dating. Maybe they’re even closer and spend more time together, maybe Flash spends more time at the Tower than he does at home, maybe his cats have halfway moved in (Flash refuses to think he has, too) but most of it is the same. Familiar. Easy.

It’s a random Saturday evening, they’re lazing about in Peter’s room. Flash is lying on the floor, browsing through Spider-Man RPF fic recs trying to find something cringy in a good way because reading Spider-Man/reader fanfiction aloud to Peter has become one of his favourite pastimes. Peter’s on his bed, his head hanging over the edge, most likely busy shitposting. They’ve been silent for a good while, just existing together in the same space. 

”I’m dating Spider-Man,” Flash says, out of nowhere. He doesn’t know where it comes from or why, but somehow the fact sneaks up on him. It’s not something he’s really considered before.

”You’re dating Peter Parker,” Peter answers without looking up from his phone. He’s clearly not phased by Flash’s epiphany.

“ _Wait_ ,” Flash starts. “You tweeted how, paraphrasing, you _wanted to get eaten_ like a week before we got together?”

“You follow my twitter?” Peter asks instead of answering. He turns on his bed and gets up to sit on it, cute and cross-legged. The blush rising to his cheeks is answer enough for Flash.

“Of course I follow your twitter, my handle is _Spidey’s number one fan_!”

“Oh my god, that’s you!”

Flash stops. "...you know me?"

Peter gives him a real unimpressed look.

"I mean, you knew of me. The account. Before. You know.”

“I don’t know,” Peter smiles. “Where did all of this come from?”

“You’re _Spider-Man_ ,” Flash says seriously.

“Yeah, I thought you knew that before we even became friends,” Peter laughs. It’s a gentle sound. Flash kind of loves it. Kind of loves him. 

He’s up and on the bed, kissing Peter before he knows it. Peter’s confused and still laughing, kissing back as best he can, and it’s so good. And in that moment Flash realises something better than _I’m dating Spider-Man_. He’s genuinely happy. Has been, for the better part of the year. And it’s all because of _Peter_. (Even though the boy in question would protest and say Flash is giving him too much credit, if he were to say it out loud.)

They end up lying on the bed, legs tangled, Flash leaning on his elbows to look at Peter, who smiles. He wants to kiss each and every one of Peter’s freckles. It’s stupid.

“You’re stupid,” Peter tells him and it’s soft. Fond.

“Yeah,” Flash breathes out, giving him a bashful smile. Before, he would’ve scoffed, he would’ve been defensive, would’ve played it off. “I never thought I would get you, though. Either of you.”

Peter shakes his head, laughs through his nose. “There’s just me.”

Flash hums. “I’m dating Peter Parker.”

“That you are,” Peter agrees and pulls him down to another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if I've ever even eaten a McNugget, with or without sauce. So take everything I write with a grain of salt.


End file.
